ANSWERS: Tetris Blockout

I'll admit it: that "Tetris Blockout" puzzle from two weeks ago ranks right up there with my "Flower Power" puzzle for being one of the hardest puzzles that I've made, and the low number of people who have solved it confirms that. I thought that last week's easier version would increase the number of solvers, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. In fact, considering that no one has solved one of my puzzles in the second week since my third meta-crossword from last month, I'm starting to question if I should even keep doing easier versions if no one will solve it that way! I'll still publish the easier version for my latest puzzle later today, of course (since it's already made); I'm just questioning if I should continue doing so. At least I got some good news to share with you last Tuesday... but I'll save that for tomorrow. In the meantime, here are the few people who have figured out "Tetris Blockout"!

• Eric Maddy **
• Adam Weaver **
• Paolo Pasco **
• Grant Fikes **
• Christian H.P. **

Now just go below the break for the answers, along with some solver comments and a story on how it turns out that this puzzle was just as hard to make as it was to solve (if not more so)!

The only answer that's less than four letters is EXT

Weirdly enough, Tadashi making Baymax in the above clip pretty much mirrors my experience making this puzzle almost perfectly; I was excited making one of these puzzles after seeing it in Will Shortz's Wordplay (where it was called "Tetracross")... then I actually started making the dang thing. (In hindsight, forcing "Penelope", "Pitstop", and "Princess" to be in the grid probably wasn't a smart move) After two whole days of false starts, nonexistent words, and other problems, (I don't know if I actually came close to 84 attempts, though; I didn't keep count), I was pretty much about to throw in the towel (keep in mind that I hadn't announced Tetris Month yet) when I finally finished it.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one annoyed by my puzzle; Solver Eric Maddy had issues with the FINAL ANSWER being too easy to figure out, as he said that "You did it again. As soon as I glanced at the clue list, it jumped out at me that the last answer was most likely EXT, and if that was correct, being just three letters it had to be the meta answer. I did the puzzle to confirm, but in reality I had correctly guessed the meta about 15 seconds in before even touching the grid...." Like I said before, I was pretty much done with the puzzle once I completed it, and since the puzzles in Wordplay had a minimum of four letters, the FINAL ANSWER having fewer letters than that was the only thing my frazzled mind could think of at the moment. Fortunately, he also offered an alternate, much better FINAL ANSWER: "I note that the letters on one of the main diagonals (NW-SE) anagram to PLUTO, and something along those lines would at least have required the solver to solve some significant portion of the puzzle before venturing a guess."

Midna, the Twilight Princess. Wait... uh, Retroactive Late-Arrival SPOILERS!

Solver Paolo Pasco, meanwhile, had this to say: "Good puzzle (and fun to figure out), but I'm not wild about how this week's FINAL ANSWER can be obtained by just looking at the clues. Not sure how this could have been avoided, though. A minor nit to pick on a really creative puzzle, though."

Solver Grant Fikes spotted yet another screw-up of mine: "The letters are "from" Iwo Jima, not "to" it. Also, I hope the ones in Will Shortz's Wordplay that I haven't tried yet are easier than this. ._."